SWIMMER: It's actually really pleasant; it's a really nice temperature. I've just been swimming at the ocean baths until last week and it's been about 18, so this is really nice.

ADAM HARVEY: Attracting thinner-skinned swimmers isn't cheap.

SEAN MCCRACKEN: They maintain the pool at about 28 degrees; but it's about $50,000 of gas a year to maintain that temperature.

ADAM HARVEY: Sean McCracken works for a company called Granite Power. It's working with Newcastle Uni experts to combine renewable and conventional methods to generate heat and power.

SEAN MCCRACKEN: We would use concentrated solar power which we collect on the roof of the pool and we will heat a fluid, known as the working fluid, which is part of our GRANEX technology. So that fluid will get heated by the sun and it will get pumped back down into the pool plant room and we will use our engine to convert that heat into electricity.

The by-product of our process means we've lower temperature heat generated, we have to reject that, it's just part of thermodynamics, and to make full use, we can transfer that rejected heat to heating the swimming pool. So it means that not only are we getting the efficiency of converting sunlight to electricity, we're getting the by-products to generate heat as well.

ADAM HARVEY: A lot of the expertise here was devised by the University's Professor Behdad Moghtaderi. It's just one of a number of alternative energy projects he's working on, like geothermal energy. In short, that's piping the Earth's natural heat into power stations to supplement 'dirtier' methods of generation, like burning coal.

Professor Moghtaderi is testing his methods in a prototype power plant.

BEHDAD MOGHTADERI: Essentially it's a mini power plant.

ADAM HARVEY: But for the technology to climb out of the basement and beyond the university pool, and make a splash in the real world, its supporters say it needs both government assistance and measures like the carbon tax.

SEAN MCCRACKEN: The real cost of carbon-based fuels needs to become apparent and with the carbon tax that will be so. When you see that real cost of carbon then other renewable energy projects like solar or wind or geothermal, they can now become a lot more competitive.

BEHDAD MOGHTADERI: Some companies may need a bit of a push and I think the carbon tax will be that push.

They're actually still not very mature technologies and they're therefore expensive; on their own they would not have any chance to actually get off the ground.

Whereas having a background like a carbon tax and all that will definitely help and assist these newer technologies to get to maturity.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: The University of Newcastle's Professor Behdad Moghtaderi, ending that report from Adam Harvey.

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